♀Emilie Croker

Emilie Croker (born 21 October 1834) was a Louisiana woman of Iberville Parish, a granddaughter of a Guatemala-born commandant of Spanish Louisiana, whose parents were married in church less than three weeks after she was born, in a ceremony that formally recognised her and her elder sister as their children. She was the great-grandmother of Floyd Amatus Delahorne (1922–2014), through her daughter Marie Virginia Cottrelle (1858–1937) and her son Jeffrey Delahorne (1899–1929).

Early life

She was born on 21 October 1834 in Iberville Parish, the daughter of Joseph Croquer and Marie Cidalise Lambremont. Her birth is known from her parents’ marriage at St. Gabriel on 10 November 1834. The register notes that the couple had already been married in a civil ceremony, and it recognizes two children born before the church wedding: Marguerite Emilie, born 21 October 1834, and Marie Euphrasie, born 19 February 1833. The church wedding validated the earlier civil union and legitimized the two children already born. The register’s “Marguerite Emilie” is the fullest form of her name. Her mother had been married before, to Jean Baptiste Meneghetti, at St. Gabriel in 1818.

Her father’s father was Raphael Croquer, a native of Guatemala who served as a captain of grenadiers in the Regiment of Louisiana in the service of the Spanish crown, and as commandant at Baton Rouge. He was dead by the time of her parents’ church wedding. Her father died at Plaquemine on 13 February 1862 and was buried the next day.

Marriage and family

Her sister Marie Euphrasie married Adolphe Housiaux at St. Gabriel on 21 January 1850, with their father as a witness. Sixteen months later, on 15 May 1851, Emilie married John Cotreall, a Virginia-born man, at the same church. The curate, Em. Dupuy, wrote the entry in English and described her as a minor and the legitimate daughter of Joseph Croker and Cidalise Lambremont, of the parish; she was sixteen. Her brother-in-law Adolphe Housiaux was among the witnesses, and neither bride nor groom signed, both making their marks.

The couple had five children, born between 1851 and 1871. Their daughters Marie Melinga and Mary Ida were baptized in 1852 at St. Gabriel and in 1856 at St. John the Evangelist in Plaquemine. Marie Virginia, born in November 1858, was baptized at Plaquemine on 26 February 1859. A fourth daughter, Marie Clorinne, was born on 7 December 1868 and baptized at Plaquemine in July 1869, and a son, Joseph Posey, was born on 10 May 1871 and baptized there on 1 June 1873. Clorinne very probably became the Clorine Cottrel who married Emile Serrette in St. Martin Parish in January 1884; she died before April 1910. In June 1870 the family lived in the Sixth Ward of Iberville Parish, near Plaquemine, where Emilie kept house for her husband, a swamp laborer, and for Virginia, aged 12, and a child entered as Clarence, aged one and marked male, almost certainly Marie Clorinne, then eighteen months old, whom the enumerator most likely recorded under the wrong name and sex. Like her husband and daughter, she was recorded as unable to read or write.

Notes

The baptisms of the two youngest children are in the printed abstracts of the diocesan registers of St. John the Evangelist at Plaquemine. Marie Clorinne is entered as the daughter of “John Caterall and Emilie CROQUAIRE”, born 7 December 1868 and baptized 23 July 1869, with Charles Rilter and Lena Husiaux as sponsors. Joseph Posey is entered as the son of “John Cantrelle and Emilie CROQUAIRE”, born 10 May 1871 and baptized 1 June 1873, with Charles Biehler and Mary Eve Biehler as sponsors. The identification of the child “Clarence” of 1870 with Clorinne, and of Clorinne with the wife of Emile Serrette, is probable but not proved. The census of 1900 in the second ward of St. Martin Parish gives the latter’s birth as January 1870, a year after the baptism.

The census of 1870 gives her age as 29, which would place her birth about 1841, and estimates drawn from the censuses once put it between 1838 and 1841; the register entry of 1834 gives her exact date of birth and is to be preferred, and her description as a minor in 1851 agrees with it. No record of her death or burial has been found; the diocesan burial registers hold no entry for her.